Volunteers rebuilt the Sumpter Valley Railroad's narrow-gauge line by hand starting in 1971, and today steam trains run between McEwen and the gold-dredge town of Sumpter in Eastern Oregon.

The Laurel Historical Society's Heritage Museum fills Laurel's restored 1910 train station with local history and the Waller Photograph Collection, open first Sundays from May to November.

Derry Station Railroad Heritage Park is a small outdoor park on South Chestnut Street that keeps the borough's 19th century railroad roots in view and hosts Derry Railroad Days every September.

In Sugarcreek, Ohio, the Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum leads guided tours through a working 18-stall brick roundhouse where restoration specialists care for steam locomotives and vintage cars.

Upstairs in Aiken's rebuilt railroad depot, nine HO scale dioramas recreate the towns of the old South Carolina Canal and Railroad route as they looked in 1916, from Charleston to Hamburg.

North Platte's Lincoln County Historical Museum pairs railroad and World War II Canteen history with an eight-acre village of historic local buildings, open daily from May through September.

Liberty Historic Railway is a New Jersey nonprofit that raises money and awards grants so other preservation groups can restore and interpret the state's railroad and transportation history.

In Fostoria, Ohio, the Iron Triangle Railpark puts visitors on a 360-degree platform inside three double-track mainlines, while the Fostoria Rail Preservation Society cares for the old LE&W depot.

Brodhead's 1881 Cream City brick Milwaukee Road depot is now a volunteer-run museum, with a Beloit-built Fairbanks-Morse switcher, a rare 1941 caboose and displays on local cheese makers.

Inside the working Washington-Mason powerhouse on Nob Hill, the free Cable Car Museum lets you watch the wheels that pull San Francisco's cable cars and see three cars from the 1870s.

Built for the 1962 World's Fair, the Seattle Center Monorail still runs its original Blue and Red Trains on a two-minute hop between downtown Westlake Center and Seattle Center.

The Wilcox family's Grove Farm homestead in Lihue keeps Kauai's sugar era alive, with guided house tours and four restored plantation steam locomotives cared for by volunteers at a 1943 roundhouse.

The Missabe Railroad Historical Society gathers the history of the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway, the iron ore hauler of northern Minnesota, through an archive, rosters and its magazine.

Maryland is where American railroading started. This guide covers 14 train museums and rail sites, from Baltimore's roundhouse and the oldest station in the country to mountain steam rides and free depots.

Bristol grew up around its railroad, and its 1902 train station, the fourth depot on the spot, has been restored as a community event venue beside tracks where trains still roll by.

In the mountain town of Skykomish, volunteers with the Great Northern & Cascade Railway give free rides on a 7 1/2 inch gauge railroad and run a museum in the historic Great Northern depot.

Chartered in the 1850s, the Charleston and Savannah Railroad linked two great Southern ports by rail. Its records, an 1856 survey map and Civil War markers keep the story alive today.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Historical Society preserves the story of the railroad chartered in 1846 to haul Pennsylvania anthracite, and it runs a station museum in Shortsville, New York.

In a former Tavares & Gulf depot in downtown Winter Garden, the free Central Florida Railroad Museum shows lanterns, locomotive bells and one of the Southeast's largest public displays of dining car china.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Martinsburg shops hold the only surviving cast-iron framed roundhouse, a site shaped by the Civil War and the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Seasonal tours run April to October.